Ultimate Mancini (SACD)
PCM 2.0 Stereo: B
DSD 5.1: A- Extras: C- Music: B
In honor of his passing, Henry Mancini’s daughter Monica
has put together a new set of recordings of her father’s many great
compositions for Ultimate Mancini (2004), a boldly titled set that has
its moments. On the good side, the
selections are of prime compositions many are familiar with, made better in
being issued in the Super Audio Compact Disc format. On the other hand, the approach of the whole album is to treat
all the compositions like they are happy and upbeat, no matter what their
original edge or intent. The tracks
are:
1)
The Pink Panther Theme
(Extended Version)
2)
Charade Theme
3)
Two For The Road Theme
4)
Moon River (from Breakfast At Tiffany’s
with Stevie Wonder & Take 6)
5)
Moment To Moment Theme
6)
Days Of Wine & Roses Theme
7)
Peter Gunn Theme: Peter Gunn Suite
8)
Peter Gunn Theme: Dreamsville
9)
Dear Heart Theme
10)
Thorn Birds
Theme
11)
Anywhere The
Heart Goes (Meggie’s Theme) (from The Thorn Birds)
12)
Mr. Lucky
Theme
13)
Whistling Away
The Dark (from Darling Lili)
14)
Movie
Medley: Life In A Looking Glass (from That’s Life)
15)
Movie
Medley: Crazy World (from Victor/Victoria)
16)
Movie Medley:
It’s Easy To Say (from Blake Edward’s “10”)
17)
Music On
The Way (from The Molly Maguires)
18)
BONUS
TRACK: Soldier In The Rain theme
All the songs are well orchestrated, but the Peter Gunn
Theme seems a tad lighter than it should be, while the one sour cover is
easily Charade. It is bad enough
dozens of awful versions of the film still circulate on DVD and lesser home
video formats, while The Criterion Collection has issued the film twice with
color trouble, making it a far from definitive release. This performance would make one think the
film is a light comedy at best. If you
can still get it, we highly recommend the Limited Edition JVC XRCD2 series CD
printing of Henry Mancini’s original Charade soundtrack. It has some of the best sound quality of an
older soundtrack on CD you will ever hear.
Maybe RCA will do an actual SACD of it down the line.
On Moon River, you can immediately tell the
harmonica of Stevie Wonder, one of the few music performers who has had as much
commercial and critical success as Mancini, as well as collecting as many
Grammy Awards. The a Capella vocal
group Take 6 joins him and it is one of the more interesting entries here. Like Peter Gunn, we have heard The
Pink Panther endless times and to hear a recent recording at this level is
especially solid here. How else could
you open up this set but with the theme to Mancini’s one blockbuster franchise,
especially now that it is on the verge of being revived? The Thorn Birds remains one of the
classic TV mini-series and Mancini’s compositions are one of the reasons
why. This will be especially refreshing
to those who are used to hearing the score in analog TV monophonic sound.
Several other Blake Edwards films are covered, which is
good, as the Mancini/Edwards collaboration is one of the most underrated of any
composer/director team in recent film history.
That makes no sense, but the lack of availability of Edwards’ more adult
and mature films on DVD is a likely factor.
A popular set like this can go a long way in correcting that. It should be noted that Edwards occasionally
worked with other composers, like Jerry Goldsmith on Wild Rovers (1971;
CD soundtrack reviewed elsewhere on this site), but he is most often associated
with Mancini.
The PCM CD 2.0 Stereo is not a bad tradedown of the
original soundmaster, but the 5.1 DSD (Direct Stream Digital) sound is one of
the better we have heard in the playback format. The liner notes explain that the original master tape was
transferred to 24-track DSD form and the SACD was made from that. Gregg Fields is the producer, Doug Sax and
James Gutherie did the 5.1 mix. It is
about as impressive as Concord’s other big recent SACD release, Ray Charles
– Genius Loves Company (reviewed elsewhere on this site) and that effort
pays off. Even where you think the
covers take liberties, they all sound really good.
Once again, Concord has included some video footage on an
SACD with the CD-ROM/Enhanced CD format showing a collage of footage linked to
this music. This is not as much as
might have fit on either of the DVD formats, Audio or Video, but fans will like
it. Though it may not live up to its
lofty title, Ultimate Mancini is not bad for a tribute revisiting of one
of the 20th Century’s finest composers, and the enlarged version of
his commemorative United States Postal Service postage stamp works just fine.
- Nicholas Sheffo
